Kentucky Humanities — Spring 2021

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Spring 2021 Kentucky Humanities

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INSIDE: 2020 Annual Report

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Kentucky Spring 2021

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Just a Few Miles South Reviewed by Linda Elisabeth LaPinta

Lieutenant (J.G.) Jesse Stuart and the Armed Services Editions

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Unburying Daniel Boone

By Matthew Smith, Ph.D.

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By Kenneth R. Hixson

Chair: Judy Rhoads, Ed.D. Madisonville Vice Chair: John David Preston, JD Paintsville Secretary: Charles W. Boteler, JD Louisville Treasurer: Martha F. Clark, CPA Owensboro Chelsea Brislin, Ph.D. Lexington

The Saga of Branch Alley

Mary Donna Broz Lexington

By Joseph G. Anthony

Jennifer Cramer, Ph.D. Lexington

By Dr. James M. Gifford

100th Army Reserve Division Activation: 1961-1962

Board of Directors

Brian Clardy, Ph.D. Murray

Paula E. Cunningham Kuttawa

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Oh Kentucky!

By Kiersten Anderson

Selena Sanderfer Doss, Ph.D. Bowling Green John P. Ernst, Ph.D. Morehead Clarence E. Glover Louisville Betty Sue Griffin, Ed.D. Frankfort

America McGinnis

By Georgia Green Stamper

In this issue: Boyd Greenup Warren Clark Harrison Whitley Fayette Jefferson Woodford Franklin Scott

Catha Hannah Louisville Ellen Hellard Versailles Lois Mateus Harrodsburg Thomas Owen, Ph.D. Louisville Penelope Peavler Louisville Ron Sheffer, JD Louisville Maddie Shepard Louisville Hope Wilden, CPFA Lexington George C. Wright, Ph.D. Lexington Bobbie Ann Wrinkle Paducah

Staff Bill Goodman Executive Director Kathleen Pool Associate Director Marianne Stoess Assistant Director ©2021 Kentucky Humanities Council ISSN 1554-6284 Kentucky Humanities is published in the spring and fall by Kentucky Humanities, 206 E. Maxwell St., Lexington, KY 40508-2613 (859.257.5932). Kentucky Humanities is an independent, non-profit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, D.C., and provides more than 500 public humanities programs for Kentuckians every year. Supporters receive Kentucky Humanities by mail.

Views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the NEH or the Kentucky Humanities board and staff. For information on story content or advertising rates, contact Marianne Stoess at marianne.stoess@uky.edu or 859.257.5932.

Sara Woods Kentucky Book Festival Director Gladys Thompson Fiscal Officer Zoe Kaylor Chautauqua Coordinator

Spring 2010

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Turning the Page to Spring

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Bill Goodman Executive Director Kentucky Humanities

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s I look back at the past year, it is remarkable to think of all that we have been through. When I wrote the letter for last spring’s magazine, I could never have predicted how COVID-19 would affect our state, the nation, and the world. As we turn the page to spring, I am filled with hope for a return to life that resembles our pre-pandemic existence.

The pandemic gave Kentucky Humanities the opportunity to rethink many of its programs and how we deliver the humanities to citizens of the Commonwealth. However, one thing that didn’t change is our ability to share Kentucky’s stories with you through Kentucky Humanities magazine.

Renowned Chef and Restaurateur Ouita Michel has teamed up with Chef and Recipe Developer Sara Gibbs and Special Project Director Genie Graf to create Just a Few Miles South: Timeless Recipes From Our Favorite Places. Published by the University Press of Kentucky, Just a Few Miles South is more than a cookbook. In addition to the recipes that have made the Ouita Michel Family of Restaurants famous, it includes stories behind the recipes. Linda LaPinta shares more on page 8.

Known for his short stories, poetry, and novels, Jesse Stuart also served in the armed forces during World War II. While he never served overseas, two of Stuart’s books inspired American soldiers who were missing home. On page 10, Dr. James Gifford tells us about Jesse Stuart and the Armed Services Editions.

Ken Hixson takes us back to the summer of 1961 when increased tensions caused President John F. Kennedy to triple the draft and call up 127,000 Reserves. Among the Reservists activated, was the all-Kentucky 100th Division, headquartered in Louisville. Hixson was a member of that remarkable group. Read his story on page 14.

September 2020 marked the 200th anniversary of the death of Daniel Boone. On page 18, Dr. Matthew Smith shares more about the famous Kentucky frontiersman, the controversy surrounding his burial(s), and his final resting place alongside his wife, Rebecca Bryan Boone.

Turn to page 23 to read “The Saga of Branch Alley” by Joseph G. Anthony. While little is known about the Lexington neighborhood today, it was often featured in the Lexington Leader in the late 1880s through 1914.

On page 28, poet Kiersten Anderson reminds us of the splendor of our beloved Commonwealth in her poem “Oh Kentucky!”

And finally, in preparation for Mother’s Day, Georgia Green Stamper revisits the mothers in her family tree, making new discoveries on her journey to the past. Her story is on page 30.

I hope you enjoy this issue of Kentucky Humanities and that you will share it with your friends in print or online at kyhumanities.org. We want to hear your Kentucky stories as well. If you have a story to share, please contact our editor, Marianne Stoess, Marianne.Stoess@uky.edu.

Thank you to our loyal partner

Delivering Smithsonian exhibits to 13 locations across the Commonwealth over two years.

KENTUCKY HUMANITIES

telling kentucky’s story council pages Three new members elected to Kentucky Humanities Board Selena Sanderfer Doss, Hope Wilden, and George C. Wright were elected to the Kentucky Humanities board of directors at the October 2020 Board Meeting. They will each serve a three-year term, with a second three-year term optional. As members of the 23-person volunteer board of directors, Doss, Wilden, and Wright will help set council policies, award project grants to community organizations, and participate in fund-raising to help Kentucky Humanities meet the growing demand for its programs.

Selena Sanderfer Doss

Hope Wilden

George C. Wright

Selena Sanderfer Doss has been a faculty member at Western Kentucky University since 2010. She is currently an Associate Professor of History at Western Kentucky University.

Doss recently won a fellowship from the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery for her project titled “Involuntary Pilgrimage: Black Southerners and Territorial Separatism, 1783-1904.” She spent the spring 2020 semester living and working in the Harlem section of New York City. The Lapidus Center is housed in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, part of the New York Public Library system and one of the premier collections of material related to Black history and culture in the country. Lapidus fellows, along with other Schomburg fellows, receive office space at the Center, and participate in weekly seminar meetings where they read and discuss each other’s scholarly work.

Doss holds bachelor of arts degrees in history and sociology from Fisk University, a master of arts in history from Vanderbilt University, and a Ph.D. in history from the Vanderbilt University.

Since 2015, Hope Widen has been a Senior Financial Advisor, Portfolio Advisor, and Retirement Benefits Consultant with Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. Prior to working with Merrill Lynch, Wilden spent two years working as a High Net Worth Guidance Consultant at Fidelity Investments.

Wilden is actively involved in the business community, participating in many networking groups to meet other professionals and business owners. She is also involved in the Lexington Chapter of the Professional Women’s Forum and the University of Kentucky Alumni Association.

A graduate of the University of Kentucky, Wilden is a Certified Plan Fiduciary Advisor (CPFA).

Dr. George C. Wright is the Senior Adviser to the President, Interim Vice President for Institutional Diversity, and Distinguished Scholar at the University of Kentucky.

Wright has a long and distinguished career in higher education. He was an Assistant Professor in the University of Kentucky’s History Department, a Professor and Vice Provost at the University of Texas at Austin, an Endowed Professor and Director of the Afro-American Studies program at Duke University, and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of Texas at Arlington. Wright was named the seventh President of Prairie View A&M University in 2003 and served in that role until 2017.

Wright is the author of three books, A History of Blacks in Kentucky: In Pursuit of Equality, 1890-1980, Volume II; Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865-1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and “Legal Lynchings”, and Life Behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930.

A graduate of Lexington’s Lafayette High School, Wright went on to earn his bachelor and master of arts degrees in history from UK and his doctorate in history from Duke University. The University of Kentucky awarded Wright an honorary Doctor of Letters in 2004.

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telling kentucky’s story council pages 2020 Kentucky Book Festival®

The 39th annual Kentucky Book Festival moved to a fully online format in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. With help from our media partner, Studio46 Media, book festival sessions were produced and made available to audiences via Zoom and Facebook Live. A series of seven Author Happy Hour programs featuring 23 authors—including Meg Cabot (author of the Princess Diaries series) and New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof— were filmed on location at the Kentucky Humanities’ home office. An additional 13 Kentucky Book Festival Conversations were made available to the public the week of November 9-14, with a total of 37 authors participating, including novelists John Grisham and Terry Brooks; poets Nikky Finney and Dwayne Betts; and romance writers J. R. Ward and Christine Feehan.

Virtual attendees were able to submit questions for sessions in advance to be answered live by the authors, making the experience engaging and entertaining despite being virtual.

The Kentucky Book Festival School Days Program was produced online, too, bringing authors Will Hillenbrand or Amanda Driscoll to “visit” nearly 700 students across four Kentucky counties. Thanks to funding support from the Elsa Heisel Sule Foundation, each student received a free book to add to home libraries. More than 1,300 books were purchased to distribute as part of this program, which will continue from March-May 2021. Educators can apply for a visit at kybookfestival.org.

The 40th Kentucky Book Festival is scheduled for November 6, 2021 (additional events TBA) at Joseph-Beth Booksellers. Plans are tentative, as we are mindful of the pandemic’s continued effects on travel and gatherings, but we hope to be able to bring book-lovers back together to celebrate reading and writing in-person. From March-September, the new Kentucky Book Festival Book Bundle will enable subscribers to connect with Kentucky authors and artists in a truly unique format. Book Bundle authors for 2021 include Silas House, Ouita Michel, David Bell, and Crystal Wilkinson, all paired with artists working right here in Kentucky who will design specialty items to include with the bundles.

We’re grateful to these sponsors for supporting the 2020 Kentucky Book Festival: Hardscuffle, Inc; the Snowy Owl Foundation; the Tallgrass Foundation; the Elsa Heisel Sule Foundation (School Days Program); Delta Dental; Campbellsville University; Transylvania University; the Kim Edwards Charitable Foundation; Wildcat Moving; Kentucky Historical Society; Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning; Berea College; the University of Pikeville; Paducah Life magazine; and the UK College of Arts and Sciences Department of History. And thanks to our partners: Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Studio46 Media, WEKU, Commerce Lexington, and Kentucky Monthly magazine.

We look forward to celebrating books with you in 2021 and for many years to come! Check kybookfestival.org for upcoming events and announcements.

Thanks to Our Sponsors Thank you to our sponsors for helping make our first virtual Kentucky Book Festival a success!

Hardscuffle, Inc. Tallgrass Foundation

Kim Edwards Charitable Foundation

& Our Partners

Spring 2021

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Reviewed by Linda Elisabeth LaPinta

E

ven better than a cookbook chock full of recipes concocted by a renowned Kentucky restaurateur and her talented team of chefs is such a compendium replete with satisfying tales. Ouita Michel’s Just a Few Miles South: Timeless Recipes from Our Favorite Places co-authored

by Chef and Recipe Developer Sara Gibbs and Special Projects Director at the Ouita Michel Family of Restaurants Genie Graf constitutes a veritable banquet of just such ingredients.

Michel’s famous menage of Bluegrass restaurants has expanded from Holly Hill Inn and The Midway Bakery in Midway, Wallace Station in Versailles, and Windy Corner Market in Lexington to additional eateries, a catering concern, an online store, and the regional farm and produce companies with which her brand is affiliated. Just a Few Miles South takes readers to Michel’s Midway, Versailles, and Lexington venues to sample recipes that have made their fare famous.

Take, for example, Turkey Rachel, a variation of a Reuben sandwich made with oven-roasted turkey instead of corned beef. Michel writes that this elegant-but-easy recipe accompanied by instructions for making Russian dressing has been a Wallace Station staple since day one. And, along with recipes 8

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for such other lunchtime favorites as Merv’s Ham and Jalapeno Panini, Wallace Cubano, and Thirty-Seven Burger (a Wallace Station creation honoring 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharoah), readers hungry for context learn that the tiny community of Wallace Station named after President James Madison’s long-time friend Appellate Court Judge Caleb Wallace, who settled near Elkhorn Creek in about 1785, “was a fierce advocate for religious freedom and public education.” Michel adds that Wallace helped found several colleges and universities, including Transylvania University in Lexington,” just as “he was involved in establishing the public education system in Kentucky.”

Readers can also relish food facts and preparation tips.

“Panini,” Michel writes, comes from the Italian word panino, meaning “little sandwich.” The American panini is usually made on a sturdy bread like focaccia or ciabatta filled with layers of ingredients, pressed, and lightly grilled …. We like to use butter oil—equal parts melted butter and canola oil—for grilling; the butter contributes great flavor, and the oil lowers the smoke point.”

The book’s title refers to the East Hampton, New York, Wallace Station-style restaurant once owned by the Michels’ friends.

When Ouita and her husband, Chris, decided to open a similar dining spot, they referred to it as being “just a few miles south.”

Beyond the readability of Just a Few Miles South, its comprehensive and inventive offerings of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and hors d’oeuvre fare; its extensive selection of regional specialties; and its focus on locally sourced and made-from-scratch ingredients grant this cookbook the status of a kitchen staple.

Michel offers grits for breakfast daily at Windy Corner Market and on weekends at Holly Hill Inn. Her Weisenberger Mill Cheese Grits feature the only brand of grits her restaurants serve, those sourced from the historic Weisenberger Mill, a Scott County business owned and operated by six generations of a single family. Her southern morning meal fare extends to Buttermilk Biscuits, Sorghum Butter, and Sausage Gravy, as well as to Bluegrass Benedict, Country Ham, Apple, and Cheddar Quiche and more.

Ale-8-One Sloppy Joes, popular at the Woodford Reserve Distillery Visitor’s Center where Michel operated Glenn’s Creek Café until 2020, is a lunch-time favorite that combines grass-fed beef and Winchester’s brand-name soda mixed with 13 additional sweet and spicy elements. Michel’s eateries make their own breads, too, and her cookbook contains the recipes for Wallace Station White, Whole Wheat, and Rye breads. Of course, Michel also includes directions for making Hoecakes and Buttermilk cornbread.

There is a chapter on Po Boy sandwiches, Kentucky style, and recipes for Bourbon Trail Chili, 1812 Potato Salad, and, in the dessert department, an embarrassment of riches. Chocolate lov-

ers will want to try Danger Brownies and Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie Bars. Others who bank on chocolate-free-meal finales being calorie free may prefer to try Sour Cream Apple Pie, Blackberry Crumble Pie, or Buttermilk Chess Pie. Among the extra ingredients Michel sprinkles so liberally throughout her primer are her unabashed affection for food and place. Her adoration and generosity also extend to the people who have worked for her (or with her, as she would no doubt say) to create culinary classics. By including their names in her recipe titles, she honors them and their significant contributions to the Commonwealth’s dining community.

In his foreword to Michael’s book, Kentucky writer Silas House states, “Ouita is much more than a chef and a restaurant owner. She is a community builder and activist for the transformative power of food, and perhaps best of all, she is one of those people whose mere presence makes the world a better place.” House refers to Michel’s book of 70-plus recipes as “a tour of Kentucky and a praise song for place.” Just a Few Miles South is that and so much more.

About the Author

Linda Elisabeth LaPinta directs Spalding University’s doctoral program in leadership. Under her maiden name, Beattie, she published three books related to Kentucky writers and a fourth book about intimate partner abuse. In addition, she has published numerous book reviews and magazine articles in regional and national newspapers, magazines, and journals.

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Lieutenant (j.g.) Jesse Stuart and The Armed Services Editions

Lieutenant Junior Grade Jesse Stuart with his daughter Jane and wife Deane.

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Photo courtesy of Dr. James M. Gifford

By Dr. James M. Gifford

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Photo courtesy of Dr. James M. Gifford

esse Stuart was a man of wide-ranging accomplishments.

He was a world-famous author, a respected educator, a farsighted conservationist, and an accomplished spokesman for his Appalachian homeland. And, like many men and women of his generation, he served in the armed forces during World War II. In 1942, Jesse, who was 36 years old, had failed his physical exam when he tried to join the Army. Two years later, he tried to enter the war again by joining the Navy. This time, he passed his physical exam in Huntington, West Virginia, in February, and was sworn in at Louisville on March 31, 1944. He left immediately for basic training at the Great Lakes Training Command near Chicago and was there for 14 weeks, missing his daughter Jane, his wife Deane, and their “little home, dogs and chickens.”1 Jesse dreaded the intense workouts “at [his] age” and losing “the freedom a civilian has in America,” but hoped “to make a good seaman.” He put forth a great effort, running so hard and so often that he lost six and a half pounds in a single week.2 On July 12, 1944, a month before his 38th birthday, he graduated and was commissioned as a Lieutenant Junior Grade (LT JG). He was assigned to the Bureau of Aeronautics in Washington, D.C., where he worked until the war ended.

In the Writers Unit, he was given weak assignments that did not stimulate his cyclonic energy. As frequently as possible, he “did some smooth and tall talking” to get passes, which Two years after failing the physical exam to join the Army, allowed him to visit his family and friends in Greenup County. 38-year-old Jesse Stuart passed the exam to join the Navy.

Soon, however, Deane and Jane moved to Washington,

because Jesse worried that Jane would forget who he was.3 Jesse was torn over his role in the war. He felt guilty because Meanwhile, his brother, James, also served in the U.S. of the “easy life” he and his co-workers were living and wondered if he could have been more useful as a farmer than Navy. He was commissioned a Lieutenant Junior Grade (LT JG), serving overseas in the Pacific theater aboard the as a bureaucrat in uniform. He wrote in his journal: USS Rushmore (LSD-14) from May 18, 1944 to December Since the weather was a little close, sultry outside and 24, 1945. While aboard the Rushmore, Lt. Stuart saw action storm clouds hanging over Washington, office doors were during amphibious landings at Leyte Gulf in October 1944, thrown open and I could see inside. Office after office that Palawan in February 1945, Mindanao in March 1945, and I passed, all a small bureau in its own right, I saw groups Tarakan, Borneo in May 1945. He returned to the states from of officers sitting with feet upon the desks…or little his overseas tour of duty in late December 1945 and was groups talking to each other…. It was a spectacle of easy released from active duty. 5 life. And then it made me wonder what it was all about.

Like most American families, the Stuarts experienced World Wasn’t there enough for us to do here to keep us busy?

War II as a family affair. While Jesse and James joined 2 million What was I contributing to the war effort? Would I have fellow Southerners in uniform, their three sisters worked at been better off on my farm producing food and writing the Clayton Lambert munitions plant in Wurtland (Greenup books and stories and paying more taxes? I didn’t know.4

A Family Affair

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Jesse Stuart to Roland Carver, March 27, 1944.

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Jesse Stuart to Alfred Leland Crabbe, January 25, 1945; Jesse Stuart to Gus Voiers, April 12, 1944.

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Jesse Stuart to Gus Voiers, July 5, 1944.

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Jesse Stuart’s Daily Journal, September 12, 1944.

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Special thanks to John M. Trowbridge, Command Historian emeritus, Kentucky National Guard, for his research of James Stuart’s military records.

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Photo courtesy of Dr. James M. Gifford

Jesse Stuart’s collection of short stories, Head O’ W-Hollow, and his novel, Taps For Private Tussie, were among the 1,322 titles published as Armed Services Editions for American service men during World War II. County) during the war.6 Sophia, Mary, and Glennis were part of a generation of American women who proved that “the woman’s place” was not necessarily in the home. In 1880, 2.5 million women were gainfully employed. By 1920, that number had doubled, and by 1940 it had more than doubled again.

In the national workplace, women replaced men who were serving during World War II and women also, for the first time in American history, served in non-combat jobs in the armed services. More than 250,000 women served as WACs (Army), SPARS (Coast Guard), WAVES (Navy), and in the Marine Corps. The “girls behind the men behind the guns” were machinists, storekeepers, clerical workers, and radio operators.

They drove jeeps and trucks and flew airplanes in non-combat roles. Like the Stuart women, many American women had worked in the fields beside the men in their families. During the 1940s, they expanded their support and played an active role in winning a two-front war that spanned the globe.

While Jesse was in Washington during World War II, his father, who was 64 years old and in poor health, was unable

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to do much physical labor, so Uncle Jesse Hilton was trying to manage Jesse Stuart’s farm single-handedly. It was a formidable challenge and the land was suffering. Jesse, in his overly dramatic way, was unsure whether he would ever see his home again, as he expected to be “shipped to the mid Pacific…unless some radical changes [came] about.”7 He lamented to his friend Gus Voiers, “Remember my chickens!

Deane has sold them. I hated to sell them—would hate to see the house with the shades down, grass growing in the yard and the dogs gone. One of these days I hope to live there again.”8

Armed Services Editions Although Jesse Stuart never served overseas, two of his books provided special inspiration to American soldiers far from home. Stuart’s novel, Taps For Private Tussie, and his short story collection, Head O’ W-Hollow, were two of 1,322 titles that were published as Armed Services Editions for American service men during World War II. Between 1943 and 1947, almost 123 million copies of these pocket-sized

Glennis, Mary and Sophia worked at Clayton Lambert until the war was over, according to Carrol Abdon, Glennis’ niece. Clayton Lambert made 40mm shells for the

Navy and received an award from the federal government in 1945 for its contribution to the war effort. Ethel McBrayer said the Clayton Lambert employees “made a lot more money than the school teachers.” James M. Gifford interview with Ethel McBrayer, December 27, 2005, at her home in Greenup, Kentucky.

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Jesse Stuart to Lena Wells Voiers and Gus Voiers, September 14, 1944.

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Jesse Stuart to Lena Wells Voiers and Gus Voiers, September 27, 1944.

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Photo courtesy of Dr. James M. Gifford

paperbacks were distributed to members of the U.S. Armed Forces around the world. These books covered a wide range of topics, including popular best sellers, mysteries, classics, history books, westerns, and even poetry. They enjoyed an enthusiastic reading audience of young men and women who were glad to turn their minds away from war toward thoughts of home. One World War II veteran became a college professor after the war and later reported that the Armed Services Editions introduced him to “new literary friends,” including Hemingway, Dickens, In November, 1941, the American Library Association, the American Red Cross and the and Maugham. He still had a United Service Organizations formed the Victory Book Campaign. The national campaign’s half dozen after the war that goal was for the public to donate books for the men serving in the armed forces. represented “the most positive Armed Services Editions were only distributed overseas, in of my memories of service days.” Although most carried these books in their shirt pockets, one soldier remembered carrying order to avoid competition with civilian markets. The authors a copy of Carl Sandburg’s Civil War book, Storm Over the and publishers each received a one-half cent per copy royalty.

Land, in his helmet. “During the lulls in battle [in Saipan], Only about 70 of the 1,322 volumes were abridged. Everyone I would read what he wrote about another war and found a involved in this project agreed that they had done something great deal of comfort and reassurance.” Years later, the author important to help American soldiers endure and survive the war. Today, young people do not know that Armed Services inscribed the book for him.9 The ASE books were everywhere. Soldiers read them while Editions helped their ancestors survive and win a great war.11 Books symbolized the conflict of World War II. As the Nazi waiting to storm the beaches at Normandy, pinned down in muddy foxholes, and in field hospitals. They read them in the armies stormed across Europe, they burned books and libraries. chow lines and on planes and ships. The books were so much By the end of the war, more than 100 million volumes had been a part of the war that one sailor remarked that a man was “out destroyed by German soldiers. To counter this attack on books, American librarians encouraged citizens to donate books to our of uniform if one isn’t sticking out of his hip pocket.”

The books were an emotional salvation to young men and service men and women. Soon the Armed Services Editions women far from home and family. Soldiers often wrote the filled the pockets, minds, and hearts of millions of soldiers. authors and the authors usually replied. One young Marine with a “dead heart . . . and dulled mind” wrote to Betty Smith, James M. Gifford is a widely-published author who has author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, that her book revitalized served as the CEO & Senior Editor of the Jesse Stuart his emotions.

Foundation, a regional publishing house, for the last 34 years.

I can’t explain the emotional reaction that took place.

Dr. Gifford wrote this article to encourage Americans to I only know that it happened and that this heart of mine respect books and embrace reading. “Literacy and freedom turned over and became alive again. I don’t think I would walk hand-in-hand in a democratic society,” he recently wrote. have been able to sleep this night unless I bared my heart “When we become less literate, we become less free.” to the person who caused it to live again.10

About the Author

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John Y. Cole, ed., Books in Action (Washington: Library of Congress, 1984), pp. 1-9.

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Quoted in Molly Guptill Manning, When Books Went to War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), pp. xi-xii.

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Cole, p. 4.

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100th Army Reserve Division Activation: 1961-1962

Photos courtesy of former Reservist Ron Florence (Cynthiana) /Story of the Century

By Kenneth R. Hixson

T

he hot summer of 1961 did little to produce a thaw in the Cold War. And the problematic dissection of Berlin following World War II had left the Western democracies in constant conflict with Soviet Russia, of which East Germany was little more than a puppet state.

By 1958 nearly two million East Germans—among them the brightest and most productive professionals, disillusioned by the Soviet system—had fled to West Berlin. To stem the tide of this exodus, Nikita Khrushchev that year issued a Berlin Ultimatum to the West to demilitarize the city. He further threatened to declare Berlin free from four-power control, thus making the east-west border crossings less accessible.

The Western powers rejected Khrushchev’s demands, and the status of a divided Berlin was debated by the Soviet Premier, President John F. Kennedy and other Western leaders at Camp David, at a summit in Vienna, and through diplomatic channels as late as June. In July, Kennedy, sensing the increased tensions and the possible consequences, announced plans to triple the draft and to call up 127,000 Reserves by the end of August.

Partly in response, in early August, East Germans began erecting a 27-mile long wall, physically segregating East from West Berlin, further increasing tensions.

Among the Reservists activated by the President was the allKentucky 100th Division (Training), headquartered in Louisville under the command of Major General Dillman A. Rash. Making up the Division were regiments, battalions, companies, and support units—some 3,000 reservists strong—with headquarters 14

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and armories in 44 towns and cities across the state. Additionally, there were “fillers,” Reservist officers and non-commissioned officers from outside Kentucky activated to bring units up to strength where necessary. Many were from Ohio. Upon receiving their orders, advance parties in early September packed records and equipment and prepared to relocate to Ft. Polk, Louisiana. A change in orders on the 19th, however, rerouted them instead to Ft. Chaffee, adjacent to the western Arkansas city of Ft. Smith.

Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas, had been closed—manned with only a skeleton force—for two years prior to this reactivation. What it lacked in basic equipment and amenities, it made up for in weeds, disrepair, and lack of attention. The hectic time between late September and the arrival of trainees on October 17 was spent in an attempt to make the barracks, administrative buildings, and training facilities functional; even at times presentable. Reservistowned automobiles and hand tools—necessary supplements to the dearth of available government-issue equipment—were in use early-on throughout the post to accomplish these upgrades.

The mission of the 100th was multiple: three regiments were to receive new recruits for eight weeks of basic training, one regiment to train cooks and supply handlers, another to administer eight weeks of advance infantry training. The job of this latter group was often quite trying, given the cadre experience and expertise was almost entirely with branches other than infantry. The results of the proficiency testing of the initial advanced trainees were by and large disappointing, although they improved dramatically in the subsequent training cycles.

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@1962, Hugh Haynie in The Courier-Journal

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Courtesy of former Reservist Ron Florence (Cynthiana) /Story of the Century

Tensions in Berlin continued at a high level through much of October, with armed Soviet and Western tanks facing each other across the Berlin checkpoints. On October 28th both sides slowly and carefully retreated, easing tensions a bit. The Wall, however, did and would remain a heavily guarded, unattractive physical and emotional barrier for the next 28 years. As John Kennedy would later state, “It’s not a very nice solution, but a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.”

Early 1962 brought dramatic improvements to the Division’s mission. There was now near-adequate ground transportation, office equipment, and proper training aids. The instructors had become more knowledgeable of and comfortable in teaching their specialties. Proficiency test scores were now said to rival, if not exceed, those of recruits receiving training at regular Army installations.

The attitude of the 100th Division Reservist was amazingly good, given the interruption of his civilian life and the diverse tasks he was often asked to perform. He seldom complained.

Apparently, this was not the case everywhere. There were reported incidents of activated reservists throughout the country petitioning their congressmen and carping to the local media of their plight. This caused Louisville Courier-Journal political cartoonist Hugh Haynie to draw his January, 1962 panel depicting a stereotypical Kentucky Colonel sketching and penning words of admiration for the Division.

The spring of 1962 brought rumors and much speculation about when the 100th would be deactivated. In the meantime, however, recruits continued to arrive. By the time of the final graduation ceremonies on August 3rd, some 32,000 had received their basic and/or advanced training by the citizen-soldiers from the Bluegrass state.

The return home later that month was much better structured and executed than the activation of the previous fall. Most towns in which an armory was located staged a returning ceremony as a show of thanks and welcome home to their men in uniform.

Accolades and expressions of appreciation for a job well done continued to come forward, from such dignitaries as the Secretary of the Army, the Army Chief of Staff, and President Kennedy himself.

Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas, has been the location of several diverse efforts since that fall of 1962, including a relocation center in 1975 for refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia, from Cuba in 1980, and from hurricane Katrina in 2005. An uncontrolled fire in 2009 burned 150 buildings; however, it is still in limited use for National Guard training. Interestingly, a Google search gives no mention of the 1961-1962 100th Division presence there.

The divisive Berlin Wall stood until 1989, when President Ronald Reagan admonished his Soviet counterpart, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” That symbol of the tensions that caused the 1961 reserve activation is now gone, and the great German city has been reunited.

Then-President John F. Kennedy sent a letter to the 100th Infantry Division, thanking them for their service to the country.

The 100th Division, first organized in World War I, and fighting with distinction in Europe in World War II, is still active, but reorganized in keeping with the needs of the modern Army.

In 2011, headquarters were relocated to Ft. Knox.

Nearly six decades have now passed since the deactivation of the 100th. While at Chaffee, four Reservists died, more than 20 joined the Regular Army, and for several, the time spent fulfilled their Reserve obligation. Most, however, returned to the Bluegrass and continued attending weekly drills and summer camps, remaining prepared for the possibility of yet another call to active duty.

All living participants, of course, have long since hung up their fatigues and dress greens. Their year in uniform produced no Medal of Honor recipients—nor did they even earn a campaign ribbon. But all have the satisfaction of a job well done.

AIN’TCHA PROUD, KENTUCKY BOYS ?

We were.

About the Author Then-2nd Lt. Ken Hixson served as platoon leader and executive officer of Company E, 400th Regiment (Cynthiana, Kentucky). He lives in Lexington and is a former Kentucky Humanities board member.

ote WORTHY Vote Worthy is a two-episode podcast that seeks to inform voters about the electoral process and issues and challenges surrounding the U.S. general election.

Episode 1: Distinguished Election and Voting Scholar and Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky, Joshua A. Douglas discusses numerous election-related topics with guests from across the state.

Episode 2: Distinguished Election and Voting Scholar and Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky, Joshua A. Douglas and KET’s Public Affairs Managing Producer and Host, Renee Shaw discuss numerous election- and democracy-related quesGuests joining Douglas include Margie Charasika, tions from well-known scholars, activists, authors, President of the Louisville League of Women Voters; and influencers across the state.

Brian Clardy, Associate Professor of History at Murray State University; and Scott Lasley, Professor and Topics include redistricting, minority voting, the Head of the Political Science Department at West- 2020 election, the Electoral College, and protectern Kentucky University. Tom Martin, Producer and ing our democracy. Tom Martin, Producer and Host of Eastern Standard on WEKU, serves as the Host of Eastern Standard on WEKU, serves as the moderator. moderator.

Learn more at kyhumanities.org.

Vote Worthy is a part of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s national initiative, “Why It Matters: Civic and Electoral Participation,” which will explore civic participation as it relates to electoral engagement in a multivocal democracy. In partnership with the Federation of State Humanities Councils, programs will be conducted in 43 US states and territories throughout the course of the initiative.

KENTUCKY HUMANITIES

Unburying Daniel Boone

By Matthew Smith, Ph.D.

S

eptember 26, 2020, marked the 200th anniversary of the death of Daniel Boone. The celebrated frontiersman is buried alongside his wife Rebecca in Frankfort Cemetery, on a bluff overlooking the Kentucky River. Like much of the Boone saga, elements of myth have crept into the historical account, but the Boones’ epilogue is clear enough in key respects. Daniel and Rebecca moved west from Kentucky in 1799, and likely never set foot in the Bluegrass State again. Both husband and wife died and were buried side-by-side in their adopted state of Missouri, where Rebecca predeceased Daniel in 1813. In September 1845, 18

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the couple were exhumed and reburied in Frankfort at the behest of Kentucky’s General Assembly. Thousands of visitors attended the reburial ceremony, presided over by ministers of various Protestant denominations and graced by the oration of Kentucky statesman John J. Crittenden. A striking memorial, added in 1860, marks the spot where Daniel and Rebecca were Above: In the fall of 1767, Daniel Boone entered the Kentucky wilderness on a hunting expedition. Several years later, in 1773, Boone reexplored Kentucky and decided to attempt a settlement.

Photo courtesy of The Filson Historical Society, Louisville, KY

laid to rest a second time, but like so many aspects of the Boone saga, their unburying and reburying became clouded with uncertainty, even after the legend was set in stone.

“Thus we behold Kentucke, lately an howling wilderness, the habitation of savages and wild beasts, become a fruitful field.”

With these words, pioneer author John Filson set the scene for “The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon,” the remarkable appendix to his 1784 immigrant guide The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke, which established its subject’s renown. Written in the first-person voice, the memoir’s florid references to “the ruins … of Persepolis or Palmyra” and to an “all-superintending Providence” pointed to the hand of Filson, the aspiring man of letters, rather than Boone, the semi-literate frontiersman and putative autobiographer. When Boone and Filson met, however, the 50-year-old frontiersman was already famous, if not quite a celebrity in the modern sense. Not only was he renowned as the trailblazer of the Cumberland Gap, but he was also a land speculator and politician, having been elected to serve both in the Virginia General Assembly and as sheriff of Fayette County. Filson, 13 years younger than Boone, was by contrast slight, obscure, and physically frail, a jobbing schoolmaster who harbored literary ambitions. Enthralled by his subject, Filson idealized Boone as the backwoods philosopher he himself aspired to become. Yet the two men’s fates could not have been more different. Four years later, Filson disappeared on a surveying expedition near the future site of Cincinnati. He was allegedly killed by Shawnees, and his body was never found. Boone, meanwhile, enjoyed another 36 years, living to the ripe old age of 85.

Daniel Boone has been blessed with some outstanding modern biographies, including works by Robert Morgan, John Mack Faragher, and Meredith Mason Brown, but Filson’s Boone is the one who lives and breathes in the popular imagination. Just as George Washington’s first biographer, Parson Weems, immortalized the story of the axe and the cherry tree, Filson’s account incorporated many iconic scenes, including the moment on 7 June, 1769 when Boone and companions “from the top of an eminence, saw with pleasure the beautiful level of Kentucke.” More importantly, Filson’s memoir spread Boone’s fame beyond the frontier, transforming the frontiersman into a romanticized symbol of the new American nation. A transatlantic cult of celebrity took root in Europe, where Boone was almost as celebrated as in his native country. In his famous poem Don Juan, for example, Lord Byron described how: Of the great names which in our faces stare, The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky, Was happiest amongst mortals any where; For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he Enjoyed the lonely, vigorous, harmless days Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.

Notwithstanding Boone’s promotion (Boone was a colonel of the Kentucky militia, but never a general), Byron’s poem revealed the yearning, escapist vision that made the American West such a fertile field of the imagination. Beneath that appeal, ironies abounded. The historical Boone was at once the victor and the vanquished of the frontier, paving its advance while grieving its recession. A literal trailblazer for early land speculators, including North Carolina’s Richard Henderson (the would-be proprietor of the extra-legal Transylvania Colony in 1775), Boone speculated in land himself, only to see his fortunes ruined by poor business decisions and crippling lawsuits in the cutthroat era of Kentucky’s early land rush. Ingloriously, then, his decision to move to Missouri with his family in 1799 owed more to bad debts than to any romantic pull of the frontier.

Boone’s debts were forgiven him by the time his bones were exhumed from Tuque Creek, Missouri, and brought “home” to Kentucky. (Revealingly, the word “cemetery,”—derived from the Greek for “sleeping place,”—came into vogue around this time, superseding the older, less euphemistic “graveyard.”) The ceremonious reburial of Daniel and Rebecca Boone practically consecrated Frankfort Cemetery, founded the previous year, as a hallowed resting place for the great and the good of the Bluegrass State. Today, visitors to Frankfort Cemetery, where the Pennsylvania-born couple was reburied, encounter a charmingly forested city of the dead. Its compact serenity belies the oftenviolent life Boone lived, expressing that deeper longing for natural order identified at the end of his “Adventures.” (“But now the scene is changed,” wrote Filson: “Peace crowns the sylvan shade.”) The lingering impression is appropriately forgiving: a sense of peace at odds with the march of history.

In the spring of 2008, I visited Daniel and Rebecca’s burial site for the first time. I was in Frankfort for the week, researching my doctoral dissertation on Kentucky camp revivals at the incongruously modern archives of the Kentucky Historical Society. After a long day cooped up over manuscripts and microfilm followed by a Hot Brown sandwich and some Guinness at a nearby bar, I lighted up the hill to Frankfort Cemetery. Like most of Kentucky’s capital city, the cemetery was agreeably quaint. It took me some wandering to find the burial site, despite the signage pointing the way. As the shadows lengthened, the Boone monument presented itself half in shade, half in the warm light of evening. Some curious optical illusion animated the relief panels on each of the monument’s four sides, depicting chapters in the life of Daniel and Rebecca.

A site of historical pilgrimage, the Boone memorial invokes an odd mixture of emotions. Despite the illusion of animation, a sense of permanence is carved into the 15-foot pillar through its bas relief panels, added in 1862. Here lie Daniel and Rebecca Boone, preserved for all time. Rebecca is depicted in only one of the four panels, her hunched figure milking a cow. Daniel, more dramatically, is depicted on the remaining three. In one scene Spring 2021

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Daniel Boone (pictured above) inspired pioneer author John Filson to add an appendix to his book The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke titled “The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone.” His description of Boone created the model of the American frontiersman and assured Boone’s immortality.

Photo courtesy of The Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, KY

he reposes over the freshly-shot carcass of a deer, lost in thought amid dense forest. In the next scene, he converses enigmatically with an African American youth. Finally, Boone is shown fighting a Native American warrior in hand-to-hand combat, a second warrior dead at his feet. In each of these examples, Boone’s Kentucky long rifle is clearly visible; in the latter scene, swung as a club against his opponent’s tomahawk. Most curiously, Boone is depicted in each image wearing a racoon skin hat. In real life, Boone eschewed such rustic headwear in favor of a more elegant brimmed felt hat, evoking his Quaker family origins. Evidently, however, the former style was identified with the frontiersman a century before Disney actor Fess Parker popularized it in overlapping portrayals of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett (confusingly, Parker depicted both men in the exact same hat).

The Boone of Frankfort Cemetery is unabashedly Filson’s hero, mythologized in the retelling of tradition. What Boone himself might have made of his memorial is another matter. Most jarring is the depiction of Boone in mortal combat with a Native American warrior. That such brutality was explicit in Boone’s funereal monument speaks volumes to the dehumanization of native people at that time (the American Civil War, for example, coinciding with genocidal acts against American Plains Indians).

But if Boone himself was hardly innocent in the long, murderous saga of the frontier, his complex relations with Kentucky’s 20

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indigenous population were more intimate than most nineteenth century Americans cared to admit.

By his own admission, Boone killed Native American warriors during frontier fighting, but lapsed Quaker that he was, he took no pride in the fact. “I never killed but three,” he insisted towards the end of his life, by when the Indian-slaying myth was burnished into legend. “I am very sorry to say that I ever killed any,” he said another time, “for they have always been kinder to me than the whites.” Few statements by Boone are more revealing. Though Boone shunned many aspects of white society, he developed an affinity for native civilization, accompanying Cherokee hunting parties along the frontier as a young man.

Later, in 1778, Native American warriors captured Boone in Kentucky, during violence that coincided and overlapped with the American Revolution. Boone was taken across the Ohio to the Shawnee town of Chillicothe, and ritually adopted by his captors (a common practice for Native American prisoners-ofwar). Though Boone eventually escaped, his time in Chillicothe inspired great affection for the Shawnee, especially his host Chief Blackfish, for whom he maintained lifelong respect.

A complex man, Boone was also a product of his times. And in the end, the panel depicting Boone conversing with the African American youth proves every bit as troubling as the adjacent imagery of frontier violence. For Boone was a slaveowner, and in this panel, Boone instructs the youth, illustrating the dynamic of master and enslaved. Boone laid claim to seven slaves in Kentucky by 1787, though this uncomfortable fact only outlined the broader reality of early capitalist speculation in which Boone was enmeshed and ultimately overwhelmed. The depiction of Boone’s slave-owning legacy, however, says more about the politics of nineteenth century Kentucky than about Boone’s experience. A reminder of racial inequality sculpted against the backdrop of Civil War; the Boone monument illustrated the patriarchal racism of many white Kentuckians and anticipated the Lost Cause mythology of subsequent generations.

Remarkably, the Boone memorial panels are not original, but restorations. By the turn of the twentieth century, one visitor noted, the tombstone “was so terribly damaged as to destroy the carvings on the four panels … Alas! Boone for the first time in history ‘has lost his head,’ a victim of the relic hunter if not to iconoclasm. The negro boy has no arms, and the form of Rebecca is so mutilated that it is not possible for her to even pretend to milk the cow.” Appropriately enough, the Frankfortbased Rebecca Bryan Boone chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution stepped in, campaigning to raise funds for the monument’s restoration. The Kentucky Legislature appropriated additional funds, and the restored tomb, complete with protective iron railings, was unveiled in 1910.

While Daniel and Rebecca Boone’s grave fell prey to souvenir seekers, the fate of their remains was always controversial.

The dereliction of the Frankfort monument led some to urge

Daniel and Rebecca’s remains be re-exhumed and returned to Missouri, but most Missourians, including some Boone family members, had opposed moving the bodies to begin with. In order to secure the remains, Kentucky’s General Assembly commissioned a reburial committee, led

by Thomas L. Crittenden and Jacob Swigert, to travel to Tuque Creek, Missouri, and persuade the owner of the site, one Harvey Griswold, to permit the exhumation. The committee had prominent endorsements, including Panthea Boone Boggs, Daniel and Rebecca’s granddaughter and wife of former Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs. It later boasted “the unanimous consent of the relatives of Boone was given to the removal of the remains,” but at the time, Griswold objected there remained “still numerous descendants of Col. Boone … who had not been consulted.” Nevertheless, the unburying of Daniel and Rebecca Boone proceeded as planned in July 1845, overseen by the Kentucky officials and curious local onlookers including family members.

After Boone’s body was returned east, a plaster cast was made of his skull by Kentucky magistrate Mason Brown, a great-great grandfather of Boone’s modern biographer Meredith Mason Brown. The judge, a devotee of the once-fashionable pseudoscience of phrenology, subjected the cast of Boone’s cranium to rigorous measurement, seeking to unlock the key to his character. Reassuringly for his admirers, Boone turned out to have been “a man The restored monument honoring Daniel and Rebecca Boone at the Frankfort Cemetery of great physical powers … and unconquerable was unveiled in 1910.

Photo courtesy of The Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, KY perseverance,” possessing “the highest degree of courage,” and “uncommon foresight.” Boone’s one fallibility, according to Brown’s report, was that “He had no the partial impression of Boone’s skull evoked the phrenological affinity for society—he fled from it.” mania of the nineteenth century. In 1995, moreover, Dr. Emily Brown’s interest in Boone’s skull was not unique. A second Craig, Wolf’s successor as Kentucky’s forensic anthropologist, cast of Boone’s skull was additionally made by the Rev. Philip voiced serious doubts about her predecessor’s conclusion, asserting Slater Fall of the Frankfort Christian Church and donated that the Boone cast was of “negligible” scientific usefulness. “I can to the Kentucky Historical Society around the time of its tell it is a male,” she conceded. “But I would be very reluctant to reorganization in 1880-81. make a determination of race. It was altered. It was filed down to Like the relics of a medieval saint, Boone’s remains enjoyed an make it look nice. As a scientist, I can’t in good conscience make afterlife of their own, but in 1983 matters took an unexpected turn. a determination.” Kentucky State Historian Dr. James Klotter, Dr. David Wolf, forensic anthropologist for the Commonwealth consulted on this article, further cast doubt on persistent rumors of Kentucky, was invited to examine the cast of Boone’s skull at originating in Missouri that the wrong body was accidentally dug the Kentucky Historical Society. Wolf controversially surmised up. Although the Tuque Creek graveyard where Daniel was buried it was the skull of a black man. A July 23 New York Times article beside Rebecca housed the remains of enslaved blacks as well as that year quoted his insistence that the forehead sloped less than local whites, Klotter suggested that the presence of Boone family the typical Caucasian male skull, adding that: “The general shape members at the exhumation sheds doubt on the idea that the of the brow ridges are more black than white.” remains of husband and wife would be so easily separated.

Though shedding fresh doubt on Boone’s cast, Dr. Wolf was The last words belong to Boone himself. What sense might the unable to positively confirm its identity. Ironically, his fixation on legendary frontiersman have made over the saga of his bones? If Spring 2021

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nothing else, he would have smiled. Raised Quaker, Boone seldom stood on outward ceremony, but inherited a simple, spiritual understanding of the world. As an adult, Boone lapsed from his childhood faith and confessed to being “ignerant as a Child” in matters of religion. Towards the end of his life, however, he expressed hope that “god never made a man of my prisipel [sic] to be lost.” Yet Boone was also famously mischievous, once teasing: “I have never been lost but I was bewildered once for three days.”

Resting in his grave, Boone is surely enjoying the last laugh.

About the Author A native of the United Kingdom, Matthew Smith teaches World and United States History at Miami University (Ohio), and serves as Director of Public Programming at Miami’s Hamilton and Middletown campuses. He has published articles in numerous journals, including Ohio Valley History and the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society. His book, The Spires Still Point To Heaven: Cincinnati’s Religious Landscape, 1788-1873, is under review at Temple University Press.

Works Cited Brown, Meredith Mason. Frontiersman: Daniel Boone and the Making of America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008.

Faragher, John Mack. Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer. New York: Henry Holy & Co., 1992.

Filson, John. The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke. Wilmington: James Adams, 1784.

Letcher, R. P, and John G Tompkins. 1952. “Daniel Boone and the Frankfort Cemetery.” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 50 (172): 201–36.

Morgan, Robert. Boone: A Biography. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2007.

Morton, Jennie C. 1909. “History of the Frankfort Cemetery.” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 7 (19): 25–34.

“The Body in Daniel Boone’s Grave May Not Be His.” New York Times, July 21, 1983.

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The Saga of Branch Alley ... ‘Vagrancy, the offense of a person not being able to prove at a given moment that he or she is employed, was a new and flimsy concoction dredged up from legal obscurity at the end of the nineteenth century by the state legislatures of Alabama and other southern states. It was capriciously enforced by local sheriffs and constables, adjudicated by mayors and notaries public, recorded haphazardly or not at all in court records, and most tellingly in a time of massive unemployment among all southern men, was reserved almost exclusively for black men.

“By 1900, the South’s judicial system had been wholly reconfigured to make one of its primary purposes the coercion of African Americans to comply with the social customs and labor demands of whites ... Sentences were handed down by provincial judges, local mayors, and justices of the peace—often men in the employ of the white business owners who relied on the forced labor produced by the judgments ...”

Slavery By Another Name Douglas A. Blackmon

By Joseph G. Anthony

T

he Lexington Leader was a brand-new newspaper in 1888 when its reporter visited a Lexington neighborhood known as Branch Alley, part of Ayres Alley, across from East Main Street. It would be more than a decade before Union Station would be erected directly across from it. Town Branch was open to the sky there, then, or as the Leader put it, Town Branch “rolled slimily and turgidly through the delectable neighborhood… a stream of almost living filth” (Lexington Leader, 10/13/1888). The

Leader reporter, in 1888, was indignant for the residents. Why should the city’s 30,000 residents direct all their sewage into one place? “Have the people on the street no legal remedy? …

Something must be done, and that before the heat of another summer comes.”

Twenty-six summers would come and go before something would be done. But that something wouldn’t help the residents of Branch Alley. The attitude towards the alley’s inhabitants had changed somewhat. The sewage and filth still traveled to its street Spring 2021

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University of Kentucky Archives

This 1901 Sanborn Map of Lexington highlights the Branch Alley neighborhood, located along East Water Street (present-day East Vine St.) between South Mulberry Street (present-day South Limestone) and Ayers Alley. and back yard from the now, much larger city, but the inhabitants were seen as the cause of the filth more than the victims. The 1888 reporter doesn’t mention the race of the residents. But the race of the 1914 residents is identified in almost every line in the more than dozen newspaper stories about their plight: they are poor and they are Black. The problems of Branch Alley are not seen as problems caused by the city as a whole in any way. The problems are caused by the “low moral character of the houses… the character of the tenants,” as another, less sympathetic Leader reporter, put it in 1914 (Lexington Leader, 7/24/1914).

Hours spent with the help of a skilled Kentucky Room librarian could not turn up any map with Branch Alley listed, though in 1914 the Lexington Leader says it appears on city block maps. Of course, it would not appear on insurance maps—the property probably was not insurable. But except for the almost 20 newspaper stories—often front page stories— one would now think the neighborhood never existed. But 24

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Branch Alley did exist—Lexingtonians, up to 1914, knew all about it. Its smell reached those who turned their eyes away. Its very visibility, in fact, helped lead it to its demise.

Branch Alley, especially after Union Station opened in 1907, was at the edge of the downtown commercial area. Union Station was a respectable landmark right across the street. The C&O Railroad was upset with Branch Alley but was disinclined to take over the street. Neither was the L&N. As the Lexington Leader reported, “C&O had no use for the property itself… and did not feel inclined to undertake condemnation proceedings…”

(Lexington Leader, 7/24/1914). Of course, over the years the city had granted enough of the street to the railroads so that, as the Lexington Leader reported, one of the landlord’s lawyers asserted, “the railroads... (are) at the very doors of these houses with its tracks, completely shutting off egress.” (Lexington Leader, 7/27/1914). But the railroads didn’t need more of the street. For one thing, the property was too expensive because of “excessive

earnings which the houses were paying due to their low moral character.” In other words, most of them were brothels—though some were laundry places and some just transient boarding houses. The city directory has no one living permanently in them in 1912-13 or in 1914. The owners of the building lived elsewhere. One multiple owner of at least four buildings, Joseph Dinelli, lived in Versailles.

They were not attentive landlords. The Lexington Leader reported rot everywhere: the roofs leaking, the wallpaper rolling off the walls, the woodwork crumbling, the floors sinking, the sills barely hanging onto the windows. Water from Town Branch ran under the floorboards. For six of the houses, the rear of the buildings were lower than the yard, so garbage and rain ran into the houses.

There was no thoroughfare near the alley. The occupants had to go half a block to retrieve water. No wagons were able to collect the garbage so it got thrown into the yards and sometimes washed back into the houses. There were no sewage connections, of course. One yard had an open brick cistern, another an outhouse six feet from the house. Its floor was rotted but it was still in use. The Lexington Leader said that there was not a sanitary cesspool, an ash can, or even a garbage pail in the entire section.

Who lived on the street? It’s interesting to observe the change in attitude towards the people in the Lexington Leader in 1888 and later in 1914.

In 1888, the newspaper championed the victims who lived on the street, decrying the fact that the city’s sewage found its way to Branch Alley. “Something must be done,” the Lexington Leader cried. But by 1914, attitudes towards the street’s residents had changed.

I remember working as a janitor as a very young man. I didn’t mind the work— cleaning up dirt is actually rather satisfying. But I was surprised: some people seemed to conflate me with the dirt I cleaned.

The people on Branch Alley suffered the same fate, at least in the Lexington Leader. The newspaper usually showed what was considered at the time a modicum of respect for the “colored.” Of course, that respect often strikes us today as condescending racism. But the Blacks who occupied Branch Alley were mostly just poor and Black.

Certainly, among the women were a number of prostitutes described by the Lexington Leader as exhibiting “the characteristic display of red and green hosiery, high heels and low necks.” Many others were laundry workers, the half-block trek to water not deterring them.

The men for the most part were railroad workers or teamsters or even farmhands in town for a night or so. Work was hit-and-miss, as it often is for the very poor. They might rent a bed or part of a bed for part of a day or night and make way for another short-term boarder. Lexington was crowded in 1914. The landlords didn’t have to do much to keep their houses occupied and their pockets full.

The city of Lexington had been trying for years to take control of this eyesore in the middle of town. As far back as 1906, it was reported that “the city wants possession of Branch Alley” (Lexington Leader, 4/01/1906). The railroads had put their considerable pressure on City Hall to clean up the street, preferably without having to put money into the site themselves. The best opportunity finally came in late July 1914. That is when a quarrel among Black workers from Irvine boarding at a house on Branch Alley spilled out violently onto the street. Or as the Lexington Leader reported it on July 23, the day after, “a gang of rowdy Negroes came out of a shack on ‘Branch Alley,’ opposite the Union Station, and two or three of them engaged in a pistol duel” (Lexington Leader 7/23/1914).

One of the combatants was killed, the other seriously wounded. More important to the newspaper was that a stray bullet had made its way across the street, striking a white L&N employee and very seriously wounding him. Women and children were also in the crowd An October 1888 Lexington Leader outside Union Station, but none were hurt though all were panicked.

“WHY NOT MAKE A GOOD JOB AND BE DONE WITH IT?” the Lexington Leader article declared Branch Alley, “The headline blared the next day. Clean up the whole street. The houses “had been inhabited City’s Shame.”

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for some time by questionable characters... believed to be the loafing places of vagrants.” The “filthy and unsanitary conditions of the premises” had already been “faithfully described” by the newspaper. The Lexington Leader urged full support for the police in their efforts “to wipe out the plague spot in front of the Union Station.” “It is to be hoped, however, that no mere frivolous or technical quibbling will stand in the way of ridding the city of resorts of this nature” (Lexington Leader, 7/24/1914).

Frivolous or technical quibblings covered such niceties as legal rights. Poor and Black residents of Lexington had never been unduly burdened by any legal rights, but Branch Alley had white landlords who had been fighting the city in court for decades whenever the city cracked down. The police still needed more assurance.

Judge Riley, the presiding police judge, was called before the raid, the Lexington Leader reported after the fact. What “would his attitude be in cooperating with the city?” Judge Riley soothed them. “He would give the officers all the help in his power as the place needed a good cleaning” (Lexington Leader, 7/24/1914).

The cleanup began almost immediately. The day after the gunfight, on the morning of July 23rd, a hurried meeting between city commissioners, the police, health officers, and, of course, railroad officials took place. Following the meeting, police made a raid upon approximately 35 people, mostly young Black women, who were arrested at their residences. They “were rounded up, the doors of the houses locked and the entire crowd marched to the police station where they were locked up on the charge of vagrancy” (Lexington Leader, 7/24/1914).

Vagrancy? Most people might conjure up someone caught loitering on the street without means, direction, or purpose. No one would imagine that the police could come to your domicile and arrest you on the charge of vagrancy when you opened the door. Certainly, even Judge Riley would not think that quibbling.

Judge Riley didn’t express his opinion on that point, but the next few days he did preside over the “trials” of the 35 arrested. Some of the men were let off by showing the callouses on their hands, demonstrating that they were workers and not vagrants. The Lexington Leader reported another “embarrassing condition.”

One of the woman arrested had “washing for several white patrons…in a tub soaking ... and the persons whose clothes were thus literally in soak made hurried appeals to the mayor, who suspended the sentence of the woman concerned, until she could complete her washing and deliver it”(Lexington Leader, 7/24/1914).

A few caught in the net were able to argue off. “Ella King and her husband came up from Tennessee and rented rooms there and didn’t know until Judge Riley told them so, that it was one of the toughest spots in the city of Lexington” (Lexington Leader, 7/24/1914). Another woman named “Martha Davis also escaped and worked it regular and only arrived in Branch Alley yesterday ‘to git in the parade’”(Lexington Leader, 7/24/1914).

The “parade” makes it sound festive, but it wasn’t, except perhaps for the newspapers’ reporters who seemed to vary their tone between moral indignation and bemusement. Vagrancy was a serious condition for a Black man—even in an upper South city like Lexington. It could, and, did for some of the arrested, get you sent to the city work farm.

In Slavery by Another Name, Douglas A. Blackmon accounts how vagrancy and other laws re-enslaved African Americans during Reconstruction. This was not a problem for only those in the deep South. The women were sent to the city jail.

Police raided Branch Alley in July 1914, after “The Negro men caught in the raid who had no visible means of support were sent two men engaged in a pistol duel in the area, to the workhouse to ‘complete the proceedings of the convenience there,’ as the killing one and seriously wounding another. judge put it, while the few who could show calloused hands and a willingness to 26

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work were told to hurry back to their jobs” (Lexington Leader, 7/24/1914). “‘See here, boys’, the judge called after them, ‘pass the word that it’s all off. There are no more doings on the levee, and the police are waiting to pick up every man that goes hunting for a boarding place in Branch Alley. Get your clothes and vanish’” (Lexington Leader, 7/24/1914).

Vanishing—more than jailing—was the main purpose of the raid. “Immediately after the raid was completed, and, in fact, while the houses were being emptied, the housing inspectors and health officers began their work of examination of the condition of the premises” (Lexington Leader, 7/24/1914).

The raid had emptied the buildings, allowing the inspectors inside. The absentee landlords had managed to keep them out before. Once in, all the buildings faced numerous violations though only one building, a restaurant near Limestone built directly over Town Branch, was ordered torn down.

For all the police help, the inspectors did not find empty buildings. “In spite of the fact that the tenants of the buildings had departed for the police court, nearly all of the beds appeared to be tenanted with numerous and contented occupants” (Lexington Leader, 7/24/1914). It was not unusual for poor people in crowded tenements to have the rights to a bed for only part of a day.

The occupants of the beds were scurried off. About half of the defendants were found guilty, fined and sent to the work house or quarry or spent the month in the city jail. The men were taught a valuable lesson: don’t march around the city of Lexington without ready callouses on your hands; don’t dare to reside in a place that the city’s railroads want removed. And, even if you’re working, make sure you’re working for someone, someone white. The laundry lady didn’t just have proof of work soaking in her laundry buckets—that might not have saved her from a vagrancy charge—she had white ladies’ laundry, white ladies who had the mayor’s ear.

Though only one building was torn down immediately, the others followed fairly quickly. The city settled with the landlords who had few defenses left. The land went to the city with no cost to the railroads. Twenty-four years later, the Lexington Leader ran a nostalgic retroactive piece on Branch Alley—not detailing it as the slum it was in 1914 and many years before that, but as the idyllic stream and countryside it was before it became the de facto sewage for the city, before it became one of the crowded places poor African Americans were allowed, for a time, to reside in. But urban-renewal 1914 style had come in like a May twister and African Americans moved to another crowded neighborhood—or joined the diaspora north which was just beginning to pick up steam in 1914. Branch Alley—not on maps and forgotten by just about everyone even in 1938, still might have had its effect. It might have been part of the impetus that moved African Americans,

The July 24, 1914 Lexington Leader urged a cleaning up of the streets of Branch Alley. to take their hands, calloused or not, their minds and their hearts, definitely calloused, on to a slightly freer place. They might have tired of a city that allowed them to be arrested for vagrancy at their own front doors.

About the Author Joseph G. Anthony, author, moved from Manhattan’s Upper West Side to Hazard, Kentucky, in 1980. Anthony, an English professor for 35 years, regularly contributes essays and poems to anthologies, including a poem and story in Kentucky’s Twelve Days of Christmas. His most recent novel, A Wounded Snake, set in 1900 Lexington, centers around the issues of race, suffragettes, and the conflicts, the violence, and the politics arising from them. It was released by Bottom Dog Press in September, 2018. His previous novel, Wanted: Good Family was described by the Lexington Herald-Leader as “masterfully written and well-grounded in Kentucky history and mannerisms [exploring] race, class, relationship and the potential for change.” Anthony lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with his wife of 40 years, Elise Mandel. They have three grown children.

Spring 2021

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Oh Kentucky!

By Kiersten Anderson Oh Kentucky!

Bluegrass state where my bare feet run free.

Where the salt river flows to the rhythm of the swaying oak trees.

Where old dirt trails lead to bushes of blackberries.

And each morning you wake to cascading melodies of the cardinals glee.

Where spring welcomes blossoms of lilacs, honeysuckle and the dogwood tree.

And every evening when the sun makes its final plea, the whippoorwill finds its place and the deer rest their heads in the meadow by the stream.

About the Author

Kiersten Anderson is an author and Poet of “Little Dark Truths.” Her work has been featured in Bad Ass Women’s Book Club and also What She Says Interview Project. She was born and raised in Kentucky, and her whole family resides in the beautiful state. Kiersten is married to Derek Anderson and they have three dogs: Bogart, Maybelline, and Ruby. Kiersten will be releasing another collection of dark poetry and prose in Fall of 2021.

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Kentucky humanities

KENTUCKY HUMANITIES The Elsa Heisel Sule Foundation is committed to supporting the Kentucky Humanities to keep the history and heritage of Kentucky alive in the hearts and minds of today’s youth.

Through her parents’ examples and encouragement, Elsa developed lifelong passions for theater, education and the arts. She loved to tell a good story and developed her own radio program called “Elsa’s Street.”

The Kentucky Humanities embodies many of the passions that motivated Elsa. Her Foundation continues her legacy and is proud to support the outreach programs of the Humanities by offering grants for the Chautauqua program for school children, in eight of Kentucky’s northern counties. In addition, Elsa supports the Kentucky Book Fair School Days that helps bring authors and books to Northern Kentucky schools.

America McGinnis

By Georgia Green Stamper

W

hen I opened my email account on Mother’s Day, I was surprised to find a holiday greeting from, of all people, the search engine at Ancestry.com. I’d always pictured him as a humorless C-3PO sort of robot as he earnestly answered my requests for old census records. Now, out of the blue, he wanted to share “fun facts” about the mothers in my family tree.

To be honest, I’d never thought about my maternal ancestors generating any “fun facts.” Mine are a stiff-lipped bunch of old daguerreotypes. Had he run across their lost diaries in his database? I was intrigued and clicked on the tantalizing link.

For starters, C-3P0 told me that over the past 200 years, threefourths of the women in my family were 25 or older when they first gave birth. This statistic stunned me. It’s not exactly a “fun fact,” but it’s at variance with their time in history when women married early and died young.

Perhaps my maternal ancestors were dowdy daughters left behind on the family hearth until a desperate suitor happened by. But I prefer to think they were choosy women who delayed marriage until the fullness of womanhood, maybe after teaching school a few years. From what I know of my own mother and her stories of her mother and maternal grandmother, I know I come from a line of self-confident women.

Grandmother, for example, despite the austerity of her life as an Owen County farmer’s wife, insisted it wouldn’t faze her to have the President of the United States drop by for dinner.

Everyone understood she meant it, too, because she could charm a fencepost and was a legendary cook.

I’ve tried to picture FDR bumping down the gravel lane to her farmhouse for one of her Sunday soirées featuring her famous fluffy biscuits and free-range fried chicken plucked from her feedlot. I’ve wondered about their dinner conversation. He’d probably complement her “maahvalus” meal and ask for seconds.

She would have thanked Roosevelt for his New Deal.

She might also have told him how much she valued education, how she read everything she could put her hands on, and by the way, wouldn’t a public library in every county in America be a good idea?

Her mother—my maternal great-grandmother—survives in family lore as the likely source of any ambition and intelligence we might have inherited, ever pushing her children to reach. A preacher’s wife, she was also a sturdy saint who anchored the family in the harsh years of late 19th century rural Kentucky. While her husband saved souls, she performed daily miracles in the kitchen. Prayerfully, she

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Kentucky humanities

fed her family abundantly, graciously, with nothing much.

The most startling “fun fact” C-3PO shared about my matriline, however, was that it begins in this country with a woman named America McGinnis. If my family name had been passed down from her, mother to mother, generation after generation, I would have been Georgia McGinnis, not Georgia Green!

Of course, he arbitrarily began with her rather than reaching back to nameless grandmothers across the ocean. But I like the notion of beginning my maternal line with a woman strong enough to get through life named America. Was she teased in the one-room schoolyard about her unusual name? Or was it as common as Mary in those early, verdant years of the Republic when hope bubbled from the earth like spring water?

No paintings have survived of America McGinnis, so I am free to picture her in my own image, a Scotch-Irish girl, pale, with reddish, blonde hair. Widowed at age 34 and left with children to rear, she’d probably laugh at my high-falutin rhetoric if I asked her how she would define her American Dream.

But surely, America McGinnis had one—for her family to come here, for her to endure.

Was it achieved when she escaped servitude in another’s kitchen and became matron of her own? Was it about walking on farmland that belonged to her people and not to others?

Was it Jefferson’s pursuit of happiness, that phrase that seems to encompass all the other freedoms?

What ambitions did she have for her daughters? Silk dresses and a brick house? Or did she only dream that they would have enough to eat, live to adulthood, and survive childbirth themselves?

And how did my America feel about being unable to vote in her America? Did she chafe at the irony? Did she question the morality of slavery? Did she ever look up and ask “why?” Or was her American Dream about the freedom to dream things that never were and ask, as Robert Kennedy later would do, “why not?”

C-3PO could not answer my questions. When I pressed him, he gently reminded me that America has many mothers, and as many stories, and that I, Georgia McGinnis, am only one of America’s many daughters.

About the Author

Georgia Green Stamper is a Kentucky writer whose published works include Butter in the Morning and You Can Go Anywhere.

She is a graduate of Transylvania University.

Grant Funds Available

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) will receive $135 million in supplemental funding to assist humanities organizations and other cultural institutions affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP) approved by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Joseph R. Biden.

Approximately 40 percent, or $54 million, will go directly to NEH’s local affiliates, the state and jurisdictional humanities councils, to allow for accelerated distribution of funds to local humanities organizations and programs around the country.

This means Kentucky Humanities will receive a second round of grant funding to assist cultural organizations in Kentucky. Kentucky Humanities will distribute American Rescue Plan relief funding, through a competitive process, to cultural organizations such as museums, libraries, historic sites, archives, and educational institutions, which continue to feel the dire effects of the pandemic.

Detailed instructions for applying for these grants can be found at kyhumanities.org.

Applicants must be: • Non-profit humanities and cultural organizations based in Kentucky with a demonstrated commitment to the public humanities.

• 501c3 status or non-profits designated by the state.

The following types of organizations are ineligible for general operating support: K-12 schools; universities, colleges, and academic departments; chapters of national organizations; organizations focused solely on the arts that do not have an explicit commitment to humanities programming; for-profit organizations; religious organizations; individuals.

KENTUCKY HUMANITIES

KENTUCKY HUMANITIES

NONPROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID PERMIT NO. 51 LEXINGTON, KY

206 East Maxwell Street University of Kentucky Lexington, KY 40506-0315 859.257.5932 kyhumanities.org

The Smithsonian is in Kentucky!

March 27, 2021-May 1, 2021 in Murray May 8, 2021-June 12, 2021 in Louisville June 19, 2021-July 24, 2021 in Somerset July 31, 2021-September 11, 2021 in LaGrange September 18, 2021-October 23, 2021 in Madisonville October 30, 2021-December 11, 2021 in Wilmore

April 10, 2021-May 15, 2021 in Glasgow May 22, 2021-June 26, 2021 in Paris July 3, 2021-July 31, 2021 in Loretto

Learn more at kyhumanities.org.

KENTUCKY HUMANITIES